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Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The
release of November’s IAEA report sighting “credible” evidence of Iranian
efforts to develop nuclear weapons has largely played into the hands of the
Israeli Ministry of Defense. As Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has sought
to muster support for unilateral military strikes against Iran, many have
surmised that Israeli military intervention may be imminent.

However,
this fails to account for the fact that Israel, through its intelligence wing
the Mossad, has already been engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear
program for almost a decade. The only change in recent months is that this
ongoing campaign has slowly become more overt.

Dagan’s Legacy

The
Mossad’s intensified pressure on Iran can be traced back to the rise of Meir
Dagan as head of the organization. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon brought
in Dagan in 2001 to revamp and reinvigorate the faltering intelligence
organization after serious setbacks in the 1980s and 1990s. Dagan had already
demonstrated his prowess and ruthlessness as the leader of a covert Israeli
task force aimed at disrupting and combating terrorist financing in the
Palestinian territories. Consequently, Sharon sought to utilize Dagan to forge
a “Mossad with a knife between its teeth.”

Dagan
revamped the Mossad’s focus almost immediately. “The list must be short,” he
said. “If we continue pretending we can do everything, in the end we won’t do
anything.” Since then, the Mossad has restricted itself to focusing almost
exclusively on Iran. As Dagan himself promised, “Let me deal with Iran my way.
I promise to give you deterrents in time.”

Despite
the skepticism Dagan has expressed since leaving office about the wisdom of an
overt military strike on Iran, the decade since his appointment has seen a
marked increase in what appear to be covert Mossad operations targeting Iran’s
nuclear program. Author and journalist Ronan Bergam has numbered “the
disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying
cargo related to the project, and two labs that burst into flames” among the
numerous, mysterious misfortunes to befall the Iranian nuclear program in
recent years. And in 2005, Iran created the Oghabz, a nuclear counter-espionage
agency, granting tacit recognition to the role of Mossad’s espionage campaign
in the mishaps.

Sabotage and Assassination

The
Mossad appears to have undertaken two distinct routes to counter Iran:
industrial sabotage and targeted assassinations. To accomplish the former, the
Mossad has established a series of dummy companies to sell flawed components or
faulty technical documents sought by Iran. For example, in April 2006, Iran’s
Natanz facility suffered an explosion caused by faulty electrical devices
purchased from such a company in Europe, causing the destruction of 50
centrifuges.

More
famously, the Mossad has also tried its hand at cyberwarfare. In a public press
release on November 29, 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the
first time admitted that Iran’s nuclear program had been temporarily disrupted
by a computer worm known as Stuxnet, resulting in the malfunction of several
centrifuges. Although Ahmadinejad had previously noted setbacks within the
nuclear program, this was the first instance in which he publicly attributed
such delays to acts of sabotage.

Alongside
industrial facilities, Iranian nuclear scientists have become a main focus of
Mossad agents conducting intimidation and assassination programs. According to
intelligence analyst Reva Bhalla, there is “strong intelligence” that the
Mossad assassinated leading Iranian nuclear physicist Ardeshir Hassanpour in
January 2007. Hassanpour, who had been a vital member of the country’s uranium
enrichment team, reportedly suffocated from gas fumes emitted from a broken
fireplace. Although the death was officially claimed to be an accident, within
the intelligence community it has become widely accepted that the Mossad was
behind it.

However,
the largest setback to the Iranian nuclear program occurred in late 2010 with
the attempted assassination of two of the program’s leading scientists. On
November 29, 2010, unidentified assailants simultaneously carried out two
separate bomb attacks using remote-controlled magnetic devices attached to the
targets’ cars. Majid Shahriari, who had managed a “major project” within the
nuclear program, was killed as a result, while Fereydoon Abbasi, who has been
deemed even more vital to the program, was severely wounded. Both men were seen
as vital contributors to the nuclear program, with one U.S. official
commenting, “They’re both bad people, and the work they do is exactly what you
need to design a bomb. They’re both top scientists.”

Where Credit Is Due

The
2010 bombings are only some of the most recent incidents in a string of attacks
that have claimed the lives of at least five Iranian scientists, including
Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, who was killed in January of 2010.

Ahmadinejad
and the Iranian press have openly condemned the Mossad and agents of the West
for the assassinations. “The enemies of the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said,
“who have lost hope in their pressure and sanctions projects, have once again,
on the eve of negotiations with Iran, resorted to blind terrorist attacks so
that they can advance their illegitimate and oppressive demands against the
Iranian nation.”

Although
the Mossad has not openly claimed responsibility for the attacks, the
organization’s silence on the issue seems to indicate a tacit admission of its
role in the bombings. It would not be unreasonable to make similar assumptions
about the recent explosion at a missile base near Tehran, which claimed the
lives of 17 individuals – including the alleged “architect” of Iran’s missile
program, Major General Hassan Moghaddam.

Israel’s
most recent wave of hostile overtures toward Iran should thus be seen as a
natural extension of the policies it has been carrying out for years.As a hawkish choir rises in Tel Aviv and
analysts scramble to predict what will happen, the question is not whether
Israel will attack Iran – it already has.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy In Focus on
22/11/2011
-Derek Bolton is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus

The new Libya has a chance to wipe the slate clean -- or descend
into regional bickering.

By Jason Pack

The
two most dynamic members of the late Libyan leader Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's
inner circle were captured over the weekend: Saif al-Islam, his
Western-educated son and one-time successor, and Abdullah al-Senussi, his
brother-in-law and spymaster. These two men were the powers behind the throne.
Saif was known for his seemingly genuine admiration of Western
constitutionalism and technological progress. Senussi understood that Libya
couldn't survive isolated from the West, but also grasped that introducing
Western technology and the discourse of human rights would complicate his
continued efforts to repress the Libyan people.

Both
men were profoundly aware of the challenges the 21st century presented to the
continued rule of the Qaddafi clan and urged a controlled opening to the West
to save the "family business" -- an effort that eventually backfired.
Most outside observers assume that Senussi, as a security thug from the desert,
was a reactionary figure who fought against Saif's progressive détente with the
West after 2003 and his economic privatization inside Libya. I came to meet
Senussi while working in Libya in 2008 and discovered, to my great surprise,
that, although he bordered on being illiterate -- even in Arabic-- he grasped the urgency of attracting
foreign direct investment as much as any of the so-called Libyan reformers with
doctoral degrees.

Senussi
embodied the paranoid yet shrewd center of the regime. In the 1980s, when he
ran the internal security apparatus, he was the second most powerful man in
Libya; later on, after heading the military intelligence in the 1990s, he had a
brief falling out with the colonel but remained a close advisor and his most
trusted "fixer" in times of crisis. When we met, he expressed his
regret that he had not invested more resources in having his son learn English.
(Impressed with my spoken Levantine Arabic, he had me followed after our meetings.
Word got back to me through the leaky Libyan security apparatus that he assumed
I was not a real management consultant but actually a Lebanese spy
investigating the kidnapping of Musa al-Sadr in 1978. As a New Yorker without a
drop of Arab blood who had struggled for over a decade to learn Arabic, I was
quite flattered.)

Senussi
had a greater understanding than Saif that, in opening Libya to the West, the
Qaddafi regime was playing with fire. He counselled the colonel to avoid
placing too much trust in Western-educated technocrats and he kept his
tribesmen from the Southern Megarha tribe in key positions of the security
services. By contrast, Saif failed to see the dangers to his father's regime
implicit in advocating for a free press and inviting groups like Human Rights
Watch to conduct investigations.

Without
the chaotic one step-forward, two steps-backward economic liberalization these
two men facilitated, Libya would have remained an international pariah state,
but it also would have remained isolated from the regime-destabilizing effects
of the Internet and the Libyan diaspora. In hermetically closed states, such as
the Libya of the 1990s or today's North Korea, a popular revolution is next to
impossible. Only after a perestroika and a glasnost can a totalitarian regime
be challenged from within. Efforts to restrain popular discontent, such as
Senussi's massacre of more than 1,000 prisoners at Abu Salim Prison in 1996,
usually collapse once the people can communicate with the outside world.

What
Saif failed to understand at the onset of the uprising was that the new
discourse he imported from the West made his father's and Senussi's style of
repression impossible. On Feb. 21, Saif went on Libyan state TV in an attempt
to prevent the week-old protests in eastern Libya from consolidating and
migrating to the more populous areas of western Libya. Rather than using this
epic opportunity to address the Libyan nation and promise to lobby his father
to stop the violence against peaceful protesters, he parroted his father's scaremongering
tactics and boasted of the effectiveness of Senussi's security services.
However, the very reforms he had advocated over the last decade made it harder
for Senussi's minions to crack down on the new generation of Libyan youth. Less
than 10 minutes after the completion of Saif's speech, it had already sparked
new localized rebellions in Tripoli, Zintan, and Misrata that were essentially
separate from the uprisings which had already liberated Benghazi. In the span
of an hour, Saif had gone from being the darling of the educated middle classes
in Libya to eclipsing Senussi as the second most-loathed member of the regime's
inner circle.

The
details of Senussi's capture on Nov. 20 are still sketchy, but he appears to
have been apprehended at his sister's house north of his hometown of Sabha.
Along with Saif's capture on Nov. 19 outside the southwestern Libya town of
Awbari by Zintani militiamen operating more than 500 miles away from their home
base, it reveals the power and profoundly national reach of the spontaneous
local organizations and militias that grew up under NATO's protective umbrella.
The Zintanis have stated that they are willing to turn Saif over to the
National Transitional Council (NTC) only if a credible justice ministry is set
up and it is promised that he will stand trial in Libya -- and not be turned
over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he is wanted
for war crimes.

Saif's
treatment is likely to set a precedent for what to do with Senussi. If the two
men do indeed remain in Libya, their trials will be fraught with the potential
to either unite or further divide the country. In the worst-case scenario, the
trials could turn into a political circus, whereby different regional and class
factions could use the public spectacle to advocate for their competing visions
for Libya. Many militiamen and the youth feel that all officials connected to
the previous regime should be purged. To them, technocrats associated with
Saif's reform projects are equivalent to Senussi's murderous henchmen.

The
spirit of vindictiveness, which is increasingly cropping up in Libyan public
life, could turn the public trials of Saif and Senussi into an opportunity to
discredit men like former NTC Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril, who had been
aligned with Saif when he ran the Economic Development Board (although there is
no evidence of any gross personal corruption on his part). If the most
vindictive militiamen have their way, even the two men who saved Libya's
revolution diplomatically in its early days -- Jibril and Abdulrahman Shalgam,
Libya's envoy to the United Nations -- will not be immune from retribution for
their complicity in Qaddafi's regime.

In
the best-case scenario, Libyans of all stripes would agree to avoid the circus
aspects of the Saddam Hussein trial. But this scenario can come about only if
the NTC's selection of a cabinet -- constitutionally required by Tuesday, Nov.
22 -- jumpstarts the successful vesting of power into national institutions.
Saif and Senussi might then give detailed testimony revealing how billions of
dinars of the Libyan patrimony have been squirreled away by crony
privatizations and corrupt bureaucrats. Saif might do so in an attempt to prove
his innocence and his genuine desire to reform his father's regime; Senussi out
of spite for the former regime officials who abandoned him. Alternately, they
might proclaim their innocence against all the charges, à la Slobodan
Milosovic, and fight in court to the end.

In
either case, a successful trial could aid in the setting up of a truth and
reconciliation-type commission that would allow former Qaddafi regime officials
who do not have blood on their hands or were not guilty of gross corruption to
be rehabilitated into the new national life. Given how Qaddafi and the Libyan
state controlled every aspect of economic and public life in Libya during 42
years of dictatorship, almost all Libyans were complicit in one way or another
with the regime. Over the last decade especially, many of the most talented and
educated Libyans -- like Jibril -- participated in Saif's reform project in one
capacity or another, because they saw it as the only way to make a positive
difference.

A
year ago, Saif al-Islam was a powerful, if flawed, symbol for the aspirations
of the educated middle classes in Libya, while Senussi epitomized the shrewd,
brutal, and tribal side of the Qaddafi regime. Although many Western
commentators prefer The Hague, trying them in Libya under ICC supervision would
be even more effective by demonstrating that the NTC can mete out its own
justice and stay true to its people's demands rather than merely doing the
West's bidding. In this way, Saif and Senussi could be the perfect symbolic
figures to galvanize national reconciliation and the creation of a strong and
independent Libyan government and judiciary.

The
ultimate trajectory of the Libyan revolution remains very much in doubt. Libya
could devolve into various warlord-dominated regions, where the nominal Libyan
government only controls certain coastal cities like Benghazi and Tobruk.
Alternatively, a democratic (or at least proto-democratic) system could begin
to put down roots, as it has in Tunisia. Given the great human and natural
resources in Libya, its absence of sectarian tensions, and the genuine hope
engendered by its revolution, I remain cautiously optimistic. The capture of
Saif and Senussi is a great victory for the revolutionary cause, but it also
marks a fork in the road. The Western world should use its influence sparingly
and must not attempt to strong-arm the NTC over how the trials should be
handled. Ultimately, that must be worked out behind closed doors between
Zintani militiamen and the new Libyan cabinet, as it is Libyans who must live
with the results.

-This commentary was published in Foreign Policy on 21/11/2011
-Jason Pack researches Libyan history at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge
University

About Me

I graduated from the French University in Beirut (St Joseph) specialising in Political and Economic Sciences. I started my working life in 1973 as a reporter and journalist for the pan-Arab magazine “Al-Hawadess” in Lebanon later becoming its Washington, D.C. correspondent. I subsequently moved to London in 1979 joining “Al-Majallah” magazine as its Deputy Managing Editor. In 1984 joined “Assayad” magazine in London initially as its Managing Editor and later as Editor-in-Chief. Following this, in 1990 I joined “Al-Wasat” magazine (part of the Dar-Al-Hayat Group) in London as a Managing Editor. In 2011 I became the Editor-In-Chief of Miraat el-Khaleej (Gulf Mirror). In July 2012 I became the Chairman of The Board of Asswak Al-Arab Publishing Ltd in UK and the Editor In Chief of its first Publication "Asswak Al-Arab" Magazine (Arab Markets Magazine) (www.asswak-alarab.com).

I have already authored five books. The first “The Tears of the Horizon” is a love story. The second “The Winter of Discontent in The Gulf” (1991) focuses on the first Gulf war sparked by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His third book is entitled “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: From Balfour Promise to Bush Declaration: The Complications and the Road to a Lasting Peace” (March 2008). The fourth book is titled “How Iran Plans to Fight America and Dominate the Middle East” (October 2008) And the fifth and the most recent is titled "JIHAD'S NEW HEARTLANDS: Why The West Has Failed To Contain Islamic Fundamentalism" (May 2011).

Furthermore, I wrote the memoirs of national security advisor to US President Ronald Reagan, Mr Robert McFarlane, serializing them in “Al-Wasat” magazine over 14 episodes in 1992.

Over the years, I have interviewed and met several world leaders such as American President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Margaret Thacher, Late King Hassan II of Morocco, Late King Hussein of Jordan,Tunisian President Zein El-Abedine Bin Ali, Lybian Leader Moammar Al-Quadhafi,President Amine Gemayel of Lebanon,late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat, Haitian President Jean Claude Duvalier, Late United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan,Algerian President Shazli Bin Jdid, Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Siyagha and more...